


Lorna Hood and her Merry Outlaws

by Bacner



Category: The Gifted (TV 2017)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Inner Circle - Freeform, John Proudstar got feels, Lorna Dane is a mama bear, Minor Spoilers, Mutant Underground, Truth vs. Lies, X-men (mentioned) - Freeform, making amends, post-meMento, relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-10-08 04:00:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17379194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bacner/pseuds/Bacner
Summary: Never mess with Lorna and her people.





	Lorna Hood and her Merry Outlaws

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: none of the characters is mine, but all belong to their respective owners instead.
> 
> Note: the story contains minor spoilers.

…When Lorna returned from her secret tryst/stake-out/etc. with Marcos and saw that Andy was waiting for her, she did not even pretend to be surprised. “Hey,” she said instead. “What’s up?”

“Did you see Lauren?” Andy asked a question of his own instead of a response. “Or my parents?”

“Sorry,” Lorna looked genuinely apologetic here. “I didn’t see anyone, only Marcos – I won’t tell a lie, I’m avoiding the rest of our old crew because of reasons…” she paused and added, reluctantly: “if anyone asks, I’ll deny everything, but yeah, having you in my corner when we went to rescue John from the Purifiers helped. A lot.”

An awkward silence fell. “Ms. Reeva is also looking for you,” Andy finally filled it. “She’s more than slightly upset about you for some reason, this time. Esme’s with her-“

Andy did not finish, as the door to the meeting room, (where he and Lorna were currently standing in and having their discussion), was flung open and Reeva stomped through.

“You!” she glared at Lorna; unlike her normal cool and collected self, right now Reeva was decisively red-faced and flustered, not to mention upset and angry. “You just couldn’t let things be, could you? Had to go behind our backs, did you? Took initiative, when-“

“Ms. Reeva,” Andy interrupted softly, “don’t. Stop. Things do not have to be this way-“

“Andy. I enjoy your little crush, but-“ Reeva glanced in his direction and stopped her sentence as she caught Andy’s gaze: it was decisively mature, solemn and grown-up. 

“Right,” Reeva took a deep breath, doing her best to recover her usual self-control, but it clearly was not working: clearly, no one in the Inner Circle was being their normal self that night. “Never mind. I will talk with you later; Esme-“ and she collapsed, clearly stunned, and stunned badly, into a pile of weakly flailing limbs and expensive clothing. A strong smell of piss permeated the air, and both Lorna and Andy could see drool beginning to drip from Reeva’s mouth. 

“I don’t-, I don’t know what is going on here,” Esme spoke up suddenly, clearly shaken up her-self, (not that Lorna and Andy were handling it better – until now, the triplets were completely loyal to Reeva, and for any of them to turn upon her was unthinkable, to put it lightly), “but go. Both of you – go.” She pointed to the door.

Lorna and Andy exchanged looks. “Right,” Andy said flatly, sounding ten shades of pissed off. “You’re coming with us.”

“Excuse me?” Esme did her best to look down at Andy; it did not really work, for despite her being older, Andy was the taller one out of the two. “Just what, just who-“

“Lauren is having problems – Strucker sort of problems,” Andy said flatly. “I feel it through our dream-link or whatever it is called. I do not know yet how to fix it, but I will need your help to do it.”

For a moment, Lorna thought that the air condensed and grew murky between Andy and Esme, but the moment passed and things returned to normal. 

“I didn’t know that you’re psychic, or whatever it is called,” she commented to Andy instead, as they left Reeva behind, weakly flailing and down for the count for some time at least.

“I’m not – not like Esme and her sisters,” was the answer. “But Esme and I…we got something, you know?”

…Lorna, who had something going with Marcos herself, did not answer.

/ / /

…When Lauren opened the door to the Mutant Underground’s current hide-out/HQ/whatever and saw as to who it was on the other side, she was not immediately surprised. “If you think that you can just come here-“ and then she saw Esme. “And what is she doing here?”

“We brought her to help me check on you,” Andy matched his sister tone for tone. “Lauren, what is going on with you lately? I have been catching glimpses of your dreams, and they are not good. Since Ms. Reeva is obviously planning something nasty, this is the last thing we need – for you to have a breakdown-“

“Why you,” Lauren made sounds of a teakettle boiling over, and things could have gone in a very explosive way, when Lorna had enough.

“Right, that’s it from you,” she told the Strucker children and Esme, (who was being atypically quiet for her ever since she left the Inner Circle’s hideout/HQ/whatever with her and Andy), and shoved them out of the way. “Right. John, Clarice, did Marcos brief you about Reeva’s latest actions?”

“Yes,” John ground out. He did know that Lorna, (and Andy), had helped Clarice and the others to free him from the Purifiers, and there wasn’t as much bad blood between them, as it was between the Strucker children, from example, but still… “We did. So now you’re running back to us-“

“Oh zip it – I mean, nice to see you too,” Lorna exhaled. “How are you recovering from the Purifiers’ torture?”

“Fine,” John continued to be unfriendly. “Lorna, it’s not that we’re ungrateful to see you-“

“Reeva brought me with her to lobotomize her, mentally,” Esme spoke up for the first time since the trio has arrived. “I don’t know what is going on exactly, but we’re playing for keeps here.”

“Reeva’s a fraud,” Lorna said simply. “I believed in her dream, because I thought that she believed in it too, but it’s a lie. Neither Marcos nor I know what is her business with Benedict Ryan, who apparently supports the Purifiers and the rest of the anti-mutant hate groups, but we can figure it out in the future, I hope.” She looked sideways at Esme, who shrugged.

“No, Reeva is going to be fine,” the telepathic mutant replied. “Especially if Sophie and Phoebe help. If they do, in a couple of weeks Reeva will recover her power of speech and motor movements and will no longer require help to eat, wipe her bum or wipe away her drool. If they do not…we have a month instead. Shall we not waste it?”

“Remind me not to make you angry,” Andy muttered to the blonde-haired young woman, who only smiled back.

“Better her than Lorna,” Esme replied. “I don’t know what you have done to her, but Reeva was angry at you – very angry, angrier than she’d been with Rebecca after the bank job-“

“I and Lorna saw her exchange information with Benedict Ryan – you know the anti-mutant agitator on TV?” Marcos offered helpfully.

There was a pause as the Mutant Underground members, (if not the entire Mutant Underground, period), exchanged looks. 

“Ms. Reeva said that she – and us – was building a better world, for the mutants, by the mutants, but she isn’t, is she?” Andy exhaled. Esme was silent, stone-faced.

“Let me guess – you didn’t know about it either” Lauren asked the other young woman with venom, but it was milder compared to her new usual.

“No,” Esme shook her head. “I and my sisters have honestly thought that we were taking over the U.S. for other mutants – not for the new Benedict Arnold or whatever his name is.”

There was another pause as everyone just thought this over, as well as what to do next. “I can’t believe that I’m saying it, but we need to go and talk to agent Jace. Or ex-agent, whatever he is,” Lorna muttered

“…I didn’t know that we were on a first-name basis with him,” Lauren muttered, stubbornly determined to be difficult.

“We’re not, but we’ve known him for so long that it is simply weird,” Lorna admitted.

“Fine, but why him?”

“Because we suck, okay? The Inner Circle gave a free six months to launch a counter-assault or whatever, and we did nothing,” Lorna shrugged. “Or maybe – you did nothing, but my point still stands. The Mutant Underground sucks.”

“And whose fault is that?” John asked sharply.

“Mine, I suppose – I honestly didn’t expect for everything to collapse once I left,” Lorna smiled, or rather – showed her teeth. “But also yours, Proudstar – it’s your baby, your dream-“

“It isn’t my dream – it’s the X-Men dream-“

“The X-Men are off in space, fighting evil aliens or whatever, and they aren’t coming back any-time soon,” Lorna did not back down. “I doubt that anyone cares about them anymore. Everyone here cares about you, however, and by extension – about the Mutant Underground that means so much to you!”

There was a pause as John looked at the rest of the people present at their latest impromptu meeting, and no one would meet his gaze, not even Clarice, whose skin color was alternating between red and white for very non-mutant reasons.

“Lorna’s right – we suck,” he spoke with a bitterness that was deep and old. “So, oh great Polaris, the shining North Star, what do we do?”

“Well, since we can’t go and kill Reeva directly because of morality reasons, we have to be subtle,” Lorna sighed. “And I can’t believe that I’m the one saying it, because I don’t do subtle. Neither does Reeva, but she is a better liar than I am, and a better manager, so everyone believes that she is better than we are, that her Inner Circle is better. It is not. Junior and Frost Number One,” she pointed at Andy and Esme, “have half figured it out before they shared it with me, one talk at a time, so we can take her. Reeva’s weakest point are her lies – they are unsupported, and once the truth comes out, she’ll be hard pressed to keep it going, especially with Esme stunning her the way she did. So all we have to do is to deliver those files to the most righteous asshole that we know – agent Jace – and observe the fireworks before we decide what to do next. Got it?”

“You’re good,” Clarice said with some honest respect. “No wonder that when I joined you, for a while it was all ‘Lorna Hood and her Merry Men’.”

“Merry outlaws, Clarice,” Lorna said graciously, before sobering up by turning back to John. “And before you punch some well-deserved and proper holes in my plan, I would like you to offer a better one – and charging some Jeep head-on doesn’t count.”

“I hate you,” John said bitterly. “If you think that you can come over and take over-“

“She’s been absent for more than half a year now,” Clarice said gently, “and we haven’t been doing so great without her either, you know? Let’s give her a try at the wheel again now.”

“Fine,” John bitterly agreed. “It’s like before, before you joining – Lorna did all the hard thinking and we just stood there looking pretty.”

“And you did a great job,” Lorna replied, sounding bright and cheery once more. “Now all we need is to figure out as what is wrong with the other Strucker, and we’re all set.”

“Yay,” spoke ‘the other Strucker’, aka Lauren. “Shall we begin now?”

There was a pause as everyone looked outside. “It’s almost midnight,” Andy told his sister apologetically. “Let’s wait for a few hours until it is morning instead?”

And everyone agreed.

_To be continued?_


End file.
